As I edited these photos of beautiful Baby Preston I found myself thinking a lot about Anne Geddes.  I’m not a snarky person, I’m not into negative campaigns and I really believe there’s room for everything in the world of photography.  I just don’t….get it.  Clearly she’s more successful as than me by a factor of a bazillion: much more technically accomplished than myself and a bazillion times more wealthy.   Clearly the majority of this country relates to her vision of babies, hence her fame.  But I’ve never once looked a photo of a baby dressed up like a fruit or flower or animal or hanging precariously from a sheer sac like an abstract womb and thought, aw, how cute.  My reactions have been more along the lines of, where’s that kid’s mother?

Do we have to reach for ways to make babies more photogenic?  Can you make a baby as perfect as Preston Lee look more beautiful than this?

Its not just Anne Geddes.  Go on Etsy and you can buy a hand crocheted sac to hang your baby from or fluffy basket stuffing for pro photo sessions.  Many of you know I’m big into the handmade movement so I’m not dogging these crafters or enterprising photographers offering such products, they are making something the people want.  But to me, there’s something special about photographing a baby with something they already own: something handmade for them with love by a friend or relative to keep that baby warm rather than made for the sole purpose of a picture.  Something you will hand down to that child as an heirloom when they are grown and expecting their own child.  I know there are babies that don’t have such things.  Preston is a lucky boy to have so many lovely handmade things for me to choose from…

Or the simplicity of photographing babies where they truly belong, in loving arms.  I love how tightly Craig cradles his tiny boy, its one of the lovely “tells” of a new dad.   10 bucks says that by the time I return he’ll be throwing Preston 3 feet in the air, making Natalie crazy…

Does dressing a newborn baby to look like something found in nature speak to their innocence or cheapen it?  It might be like putting a scoop of ice cream on ice cream cake (which, I can admit, is something I have been known to do).  I love the process of photographing parents being parents, watching them bask in the wonder of this amazing little person who somehow managed to grab the helm and change the course.  You can see that Preston isn’t just loved by Natalie and Craig, he belongs to them.  And that is far more beautiful than anything I could dream up in a studio or stage for the camera.

I know it might bother Natalie, now, that the ever recognizable, standard issue hospital receiving blanket is so visible in this shot.  But it might be different later.  Every time I see that blanket, belonging either to my son or another baby, I zoom through a wormhole back through time to Fiver’s birth.  I don’t know if there is another object that has the effect of that ubiquitous blue and pink striped blanket on me.

I was pleased to see that the family message board still had a welcome home greeting written on it.  I just had to take advantage of that….

I loved the very act of shooting these photos.  If there’s something I’m certain Anne Geddes and I would both agree on, its that new babies are fascinatingly beautiful creatures.  I wish that these pictures had the capability to play the sleepy baby sighs that accompanied us as we moved through the house, in and out of light.  The only sound better than Preston’s sleepy sighs will be his laugh, a sound that’s yet to come.

Here’s a slideshow of the session and if you would like to view the online gallery, click here.  Congratulations, Natalie and Craig, on such a beautiful baby boy  and thank you once again for inviting me into your home to document this time for your family.  Already I can’t wait for our next shoot…

Posted by Mel @ 8:28 pm, in Newborns, Portraits, Wee Ones | No comments | Permalink

Whoa.  My very first “First Year Documentary” baby isn’t a baby anymore… not even close!  She has grown into a beautiful, bounding, curly haired girl.  I can still see the baby face but she’s just so…. growing up!  As Dick and Jane would say, LOOK:

We thought it would be fun to go to the Richmond Zoo to begin our shoot so I met Tricia, Camille and Dorothy the doll there.  I can admit that, growing up in the DC area near the National Zoo, I was expecting our local zoo to be kind of lame: a goat tethered to a rope or something.  Maybe some geese.  But I was actually impressed, our zoo is pretty cool!  I’ve never fed giraffes before and let me tell ya, Gene Simmons has nothing on these guys:

Its been the summer of the peacock.  I lived in India for almost a year and not one peacock sighting.  And then, within one week here here in Virginia, I’ve had two close encounters of the flamboyant bird kind between Logan and Joey’s wedding and this puffed up male who was just cruising around for… chicks?  As I turned my lens he came right at me for his close up… and I wondered for a moment if peacocks were attack birds.  I was assured he was just flirting but Camille wasn’t so sure about the peacocks either.

Or the budgies.  We had a budgie stick with honey and birdseed so we were expecting small visitors with busy beaks but its still a little strange.

Hmm… so far this post seems to suggest that we took a little girl to the zoo to torture her with a succession of traumatic, wild animal advances but I promise you that Camille really did have a good time.   The skyride over the park was definitely a big hit.

After the zoo we went home so Camille could show me her “big girl room”.  Her new room has many of the elements of the original nursery but with a new piece de resistance: a great big bed in the middle that is so much fun to jump on…

Something about life imitating art?  I did nothing to coax this photo and it makes me laugh, especially with that plastic broom: Camille is clearly the master of her little girl domestic domain.  I’ve known Tricia and Patrick a long time now so I felt like I could be my true inappropriate self and joked that we should put a beach ball up her dress so she could be barefoot, pregnant and sweeping her kitchen while feeding her children.   Using our better judgement, we refrained.

Camille did have some motherly advice for me anyway.  She told me that if a baby is crying, you should burp it to make it stop and then she showed me how.  Thanks, girl, I need all the help I can get!

I’m feeling multiple photo displays when it comes to this session.  Maybe its because Camille moves so fast, single photos just aren’t summing her up for me.

We even had a chance to update the family picture.  After I left, Tricia told me that Camille asked when I was coming back.  Soon, I hope!  An announcement was made since our shoot that another family member is on the way.  Woot!  Camille is going to be the greatest big sis….

Here’s a slideshow and click here to see the online gallery, I’m so excited about the big news!  And a great, big Happy Father’s Day to Patrick and all our WP superstar dads!

Posted by Mel @ 9:30 pm, in Portraits, Wee Ones | No comments | Permalink

Before we get back to sharing the Memorial Day weekend festivities, I want to sneak some engagement photos in here that we took the week before on the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville where Emily and Gabe met in grad school.  They are both finishing up their medical degrees and leaning towards pediatrics so Sam made me promise not to call their phones in the middle of the night with questions.

We took Emily’s amazing bridals at beautiful Virginia House in Richmond to kick off our shooting weekend.  Sadly we have to keep those under lock and key until after the wedding so you’ll have to stay tuned…

Here’s a slideshow from the e-session and click here to see their online gallery.  We’re excited for Emily and Gabe’s wedding at the newly renovated Virginia Museum of Fine Arts this coming August, congrats once again to you both!

Posted by Mel @ 2:19 am, in Engagement Portraits, Portraits | No comments | Permalink

Baby Roscoe is a V.I.B (very important baby) to me.  Exactly one year and one day ago I photographed what remains the single most powerful event I have ever had the professional pleasure of documenting: Roscoe’s amazing birth (to revisit it with me, click here).  It was an important day for me personally as well as professionally: I was six months pregnant at the time and I still play Midlake’s Roscoe when I need to muster just a little extra positive and/or creative energy in my day.

My mother always says, “12 faces for 12 months” to explain the drastic changes in a baby’s features over the course of their first year.  I don’t see the newborn in my own son’s most recent face but I immediately saw the tiny baby from the birth and newborn session in this older version of Baby Roscoe, its kind of amazing to me.  The first thing we did was to take photos around the nursery, I especially love this updated family photo.  (Relax, Chloe pup… really, don’t be so uptight…)

Next we packed up the car with the stroller for a trip to the The Mall in downtown DC to spend the afternoon.  I loved watching Roscoe explore and play with the monuments in the background.

We stopped for a quick snack, how darling is this little apple eater?  These photos are 100% boy baby to me between the overalls and all the dirt beneath his busy little fingernails.

Hey, I heard this is how the pioneers used to brush their teeth:

Throughout the day Jacqueline, Andy and myself reminisced about births and the experience of this first year… the birth of parents… the trials and triumphs of this brand new life.  We wondered if it was possible to brace for the impact of parenthood and decided that its just one of those things you have to go through.  We talked about how it is harder than we thought it would be and yet more rewarding and amazing than we could have dreamed.  I remember a kind girl once telling me that there would be a lot of conflicting emotions in parenthood: that it is possible (and maybe even normal) to feel both elated and exhausted, grateful and inconvenienced, confident and terrified.  Spot on.  Jacqueline suggested Frou Frou’s Let Go for their slideshow song because the words sum up the first year for her but she wasn’t sure anyone would get it.  Girl, I get it.  There is beauty in the breakdown.

Click here to see his online gallery.  Happy Birthday, beautiful Baby Roscoe….  I can’t wait to photograph more birthdays.

Posted by Mel @ 10:13 pm, in Portraits, Wee Ones | 1 comment | Permalink